With this idea in mind we decided to prepare a historical overview of virtual and online environments for the forthcoming symposium, concentrating on the development of audio within these areas. It would seem that we need to approach the question from several angles in order to cover the subject comprehensively.

The workshop organized in january, which involves a collaboration with students and professors from SAIC (Chicago) and also three different studios from ESAA - 3d, Son & Mecatronics, will be used to develop practical aspects to this research. It is particularly useful to us (LS) to profit from a situation involving a large group of students to reflect on the more social aspects that virtual environments imply. In a meeting with Douglas Stanley, France Cadet, Ricardo Garcia et JP Mando on friday nov 23 we agreed (after long discussion) that the idea of building a game was an appropriate starting point for this project since it provides a focal point for the different groups and techniques (body interactivity, 3D cave, sound spatialization and networking) without formally pre-defining or constraining the project.